Views » March 3, 2017

Slavoj Zizek: We Must Rise from the Ashes of Liberal Democracy

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Donald Trump's January 20 inaugural address was ideology at its purest, its simple message relying on a series of obvious inconsistencies. At its most elementary it sounded like something that Bernie Sanders could have said: I speak for all you forgotten, neglected and exploited hardworking people. I am your voice. You are now in power. However, beyond the obvious contrast between these proclamations and Trump’s early nominations (Rex Tillerson, the voice of exploited, hardworking people?), a series of clues give a spin to his messaging.

Trump talked about Washington elites, not about capitalists and big bankers. He talked about disengaging from the role of the global policeman, but he promises the destruction of Muslim terrorism. At other times, he has said he will prevent North Korean ballistic tests and contain China’s occupation of South China Sea islands. So what we are getting is global military interventionism exerted directly on behalf of American interests, with no human-rights and-democracy mask. Back in the 1960s, the motto of the early ecological movement was “Think globally, act locally!”

Trump promises to do the exact opposite: “Think locally, act globally.” In the 20th century, one need not proclaim “America first!” It was a given. The fact that Trump proclaimed it indicates that in the 21st century American global interventionism will go on in a more brutal way. Ironically, the Left, which has long criticized the U.S. pretension to be the global policeman, may begin to long for the old days when, in all its hypocrisy, the United States imposed democratic standards onto the world.

Yet, the most depressing aspect of the post-electoral period in the United States is not Trump’s policies, but the Democratic Party establishment’s reaction to its historic defeat: an oscillation between two extremes, the horror at the Big Bad Wolf called Trump and its obverse, the normalization of the situation, the idea that nothing extraordinary happened. On the one hand, MSNBC’s Chris Matthews said he detected in Trump’s inaugural address something “Hitlerian.” On the other, Politico’s John Bresnahan reported that Nancy Pelosi “repeatedly brings up the events of a decade ago. For her, the lesson is clear—past is prologue. What worked before will work again. Trump and the Republicans will overreach, and Democrats have to be ready to jump at the opportunity when they do.”

In other words, Trump’s election is just another reversal in the normal exchange of Republican and Democratic presidents—Reagan, Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama and now Trump. Such a stance totally ignores the real meaning of Trump’s election: the weaknesses of the Democratic Party that rendered this victory possible and the radical restructuring of the entire political space that it announces.

But what if his project of moderate protectionism, large public works and job creation, combined with anti-immigrant security measures and a new perverted peace with Russia, somehow works and gives some short-term results? That is what horrified left liberals really fear: that Trump will somehow not be a catastrophe.

We should not succumb to such panic. Even if Trump will appear successful, the results of his politics will be ambiguous at best for ordinary people, who will soon feel the pain of this success. The only way to defeat Trump— and to redeem what is worth saving in liberal democracy—is to detach ourselves from liberal democracy’s corpse and establish a new Left. Elements of the program for this new Left are easy to imagine. Trump promises the cancellation of the big free trade agreements supported by Clinton, and the left alternative to both should be a project of new and different international agreements. Such agreements would establish public control of the banks, ecological standards, workers rights, universal healthcare, protections of sexual and ethnic minorities, etc. The big lesson of global capitalism is that nation states alone cannot do the job—only a new political international has a chance of bridling global capital.

An old anti-Communist leftist once told me the only good thing about Stalin was that he really scared the big Western powers, and one could say the same about Trump: The good thing about him is that he really scares liberals.

After World War II, Western powers responded to the Soviet threat by focusing on their own shortcomings, which led them to develop the welfare state. Will today’s left-liberals be able to do something similar?

Slavoj Žižek, a Slovenian philosopher and psychoanalyst, is a senior researcher at the the Institute for Humanities, Birkbeck College, University of London. He has also been a visiting professor at more than 10 universities around the world. Žižek is the author of many books, including Living in the End Times, First As Tragedy, Then As Farce, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously and Trouble in Paradise.

Yeah but the New Left, Old Left, or Leftover Left--whatever you call it--has been dying for decades. Them's the facts.

Arguing with Leftists is like wrestling with pigs. It's a waste of time, you get dirty, and the pig doesn't have anything better to do.

Posted by Bob Fritz on 2017-03-12 06:56:01

In one year the 'New Left' went from nothing, to crippling the corporate Democrats, to destroying the establishment candidate and putting real fear into corporate media, corporate candidates all over place and establishing their growing dominance, one year, what will the real left achieve in four years, with the corporatists kicked out and all the workers back in and it is the workers who get to decide.The workers who are the majority of voters, the voters cheated by both political parties neither one serving the workers, first the Democrat Party and then the Government and then all Democracies becoming real democracies, the Global Democratic Reformation is here and no democracy will be left untouched and no corrupt politician left to run free.Sorry but bwa hah hah, you so funny (the real left has barely started and it will keep going year after year, after year, active for ever more).

Posted by rtb61 on 2017-03-12 04:35:56

Trumps anti-immigrant policy is the natural outcome of fear in the minds of Americans, a fear that arises out of a threat posed by the third world [on the American] people. This threat is not restricted to some specific area but extends from civic life to political front through scientific and technological excellence. The immediate cause may be terrorism, but is sth deep-rooted in the minds of American people... after several decades of supremacy on almost every front this is the first time that Americans have found themselves threatened by the rise, perhaps more development and progress, of third world nations. This threatened both Obama and Bush administration and has precipitated in recent times.

Posted by Sanjeev Khanna on 2017-03-11 08:42:22

No. I hope they bring back Hitler from the dead and elect him instead. (SARCASM!!!!1!)

Just because you're consciously aware that you're trolling me doesn't mean that you're not unconsciously trolling yourself at the same time.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 17:34:15

So I guess you are also hoping that Marine Le Pen wins in France.

Posted by MetsFanEurope on 2017-03-10 17:17:19

You're being facetious again. Zizek very clearly wanted Trump to beat Clinton so that it would make people (like you) realise what the real problems are and then get organised to overcome them (my previous posts, Zizek's books, and The Jimmy Dore Show all try their best to explain them, so I highly recommend the last two at least).

More Clinton would have been more of the same, with more right wing economics, more inequality, and more people like you letting the establishment get away with it because you wouldn't have had a boogieman like Trump to whinge about. At least with Trump people are bothering to protest, just like you probably _didn't_ bother to do when Obama was implementing the same types of harmful policies and executive actions as Trump is right now.

The US voting system is absolutely broken. It was broken under Obama and everyone before him, and it will carry on being broken under Trump. Trump isn't a cause, he's a symptom, and only a ridiculous amount of public pressure for actual democracy (e.g. approval or score voting, and maybe some proportional representation as well) will be able to make a dent into fixing it. Trump motivates people to get involved to make that happen while Clinton wouldn't, and that's the point that you keep pretending not to have noticed.

It's also ironic that you use Chomsky in that way to support your opinion. You pretty much just used him to manufacture some consent for adopting his opinion as your own. Just because Chomsky said something doesn't mean that it's therefore right; you have to apply your own critical thinking skills to whatever he's said before asserting them as being automatically valid like that. He's just a leftist philosopher, he's not the big Other.

Sorry for being insulting in that last paragraph; it's difficult to avoid being patronising when you set the bar so low.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 16:33:13

And Noam Chomsky has the same position as mine that not voting for Clinton was a serious mistake. So it is a legitimate radical left position.

Posted by MetsFanEurope on 2017-03-10 15:58:42

Zizek did support Trump and thats a fact and thats the only thing I said in my original post.

Posted by MetsFanEurope on 2017-03-10 15:34:09

"Go ahead and enjoy having the last word and enjoy adding some more insults but I will not respond further. And you have proven my point that a lot of left intellectuals like you helped Trump to win. You say it explicitly."

Do you really think that I'm only posting on here in order to win some kind of pointless intellectual game between the two of us? Do you really think that someone who can write as much as I have here is driven by such petty kinds of motivations?

You're the one who started this thing by posting a misguided and shallow challenge to Zizek about him helping Trump to win, while at the same time missing the bigger, and much more important, picture.

I then made a huge amount of effort to point out the flaws in your assumptions and to constructively challenge your point of view while also giving practical advice (e.g. on approval and score voting) on how we could make things better (and then pointed out my doubts about ever getting those kinds of systems implemented).

You're the one who insulted me with words like "ugly"; all I've done is try to challenge your points with ideas that I've learned from voting theory and philosophers like Zizek.

I'm not here to win this exchange; I'm here to contribute to it.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 09:15:16

yes please stop. Your frustration is your own problem. Your compulsion to repeat is breathtaking but I am polite so I wont toss in amateur psychology. Clinton and Obama are very bad but Trump is worse, its very simple and theres no contradictio in what I have said. Like I would vote for Nixon over Mussolini even though I despise Nixon. Like 100 bananas is a lot of bananas but 150 bananas is more. Go ahead and enjoy having the last word and enjoy adding some more insults but I will not respond further. And you have proven my point that a lot of left intellectuals like you helped Trump to win. You say it explicitly.

Posted by MetsFanEurope on 2017-03-10 08:54:34

Who cares which specific one of them is the lesser of two evils? What matters is that they are both destructive choices that are being driven by a fundamentally flawed voting system; that's my main point which, I'll say it again, you keep pretending not to have understood for your own odd pathological reasons. How am I to avoid bringing psychoanalytic terms into the conversation when you keep displaying their features so well?

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 08:49:38

your going on and on about this is what seems to me to be very weird, rather than simply agreeing to disagree. A lot of people on the left think that Clinton was the lesser of two evils and Trump is a special case of something very dangerous. Almost everyone in Europe sees it this way. You think that Trump was the lesser of two evils. So try to accept that a lot of people see it differently than you. Acknowledge that other perspectives besides yours exist. We should have ended this exchange several rounds ago. And your attempt to psychoanalyze is making you look ugly so I suggest that you stop writing to this thread.

Posted by MetsFanEurope on 2017-03-10 08:40:11

Part G. (Final part)

As I said before, it's incredibly frustrating to respond to you since you just seem to be determined to fetishistically disavow my points. Even my compulsions to repeat have their limits.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 08:11:26

Part F.

And finally: YOU'RE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT UP THE CONCEPT OF A DICTATORSHIP, NOT ME! So this part: "and constructing an argument around a very enigmatic overly flexible elusive use of the word dictatorship" is what you did to begin with in terms of Trump being one, with the implication that Obama wasn't one too. My point is that the system is effectively a dictatorship in practice even if it isn't in principle, and practice is the key point here.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 08:11:04

Part E.

My point is that the current system creates all of the features of a dictatorship but without the constancy of a single individual as dictator. You might point out that that means it's not really a dictatorship, to which my reply is "who cares about one minor pedantic point like that?".

Like I said, an _effective_ dictatorship from single-choice voting is worse than a "real" one, since people will organise and fight against the latter, but will find perverse excuses (like you keep doing) to keep themselves compliant to the former.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 08:10:55

Part D.

"cult of personality of The Leader"Do you know why some people are crying and protesting against Trump in a way they didn't against Obama, and even though the latter was implementing the kinds of destructive and harmful policies that I've mentioned? It's because Obama was handsome, charming, and convincing, and he knew how to tell people what they wanted to hear while doing the opposite in terms of policy. You could say that he even had something of a cult of personality around him. Ring any bells? And on top of that the mainstream channels are now pushing the narrative that Trump is (seen to be) behaving in a "presidential" manner at the moment. Sound familiar? Same process, different person.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 08:10:30

Part C.

"suspension of civil liberties"Already covered in my previous posts. Re: the surveillance state increases under Obama.

"getting locked up"The U.S. locks people up at a higher rate than any other country.

"Newspeak"Compare the spin and article selection of CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the other mainstream channels to that of The Young Turks or The Jimmy Dore Show. If you don't think that the mainstream channels are using deliberate biases and false equivalencies then we're not on the same planet as each other.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 08:10:10

Part B.

In fact, your sentence almost perfectly follows the structure of (perverse) fetishistic disavowal: "I know very well that [X], but nevertheless I'm going to behave as if [not X]", but let's just work through your examples of dictatorships and compare them to the real world to be sure:

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 08:09:56

Part A.

"I agree with all of your empirical points, nonetheless view your position as profoundly misguided."

Are you seriously trying to disavowal your own knowledge that your above statement is contradictory nonsense? So somehow I'm empirically right, meaning that the things I described as happening in the real world have (and are) really happening, but the obvious conclusions and logically derived underpinning that I've presented somehow manages to be wrong at the same time? Your assertion that I'm misguided is very obvious guilt transference on your part, so maybe you should try listening to your own message for a change.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 08:09:36

"I agree with all of your empirical points, nonetheless view your position as profoundly misguided."

Are you seriously trying to disavowal your own knowledge that your above statement is contradictory nonsense? So somehow I'm empirically right, meaning that the things I described as happening in the real world have (and are) really happening, but the obvious conclusions and logically derived underpinning that I've presented somehow manages to be wrong at the same time? Your assertion that I'm misguided is very obvious guilt transference on your part, so maybe you should try listening to your own message for a change.

In fact, your sentence almost perfectly follows the structure of (perverse) fetishistic disavowal: "I know very well that [X], but nevertheless I'm going to behave as if [not X]", but let's just work through your examples of dictatorships and compare them to the real world to be sure:

"suspension of civil liberties"Already covered in my previous posts. Re: the surveillance state increases under Obama.

"getting locked up"

The U.S. locks people up at a higher rate than any other country.

"Newspeak"Compare the spin and article selection of CNN, MSNBC, Fox, and the other mainstream channels to that of The Young Turks or The Jimmy Dore Show. If you don't think that the mainstream channels are using deliberate biases and false equivalencies then we're not on the same planet as each other.

"cult of personality of The Leader"Do you know why some people are crying and protesting against Trump in a way they didn't against Obama, and even though the latter was implementing the kinds of destructive and harmful policies that I've mentioned? It's because Obama was handsome, charming, and convincing, and he knew how to tell people what they wanted to hear while doing the opposite in terms of policy. You could say that he even had something of a cult of personality around him. Ring any bells? And on top of that the mainstream channels are now pushing the narrative that Trump is (seen to be) behaving in a "presidential" manner at the moment. Sound familiar? Same process, different person.

My point is that the current system creates all of the features of a dictatorship but without the constancy of a single individual as dictator. You might point out that that means it's not really a dictatorship, to which my reply is "who cares about one minor pedantic point like that?".

Like I said, an _effective_ dictatorship from single-choice voting is worse than a "real" one, since people will organise and fight against the latter, but will find perverse excuses (like you keep doing) to keep themselves compliant to the former.

And finally: YOU'RE THE ONE WHO BROUGHT UP THE CONCEPT OF A DICTATORSHIP, NOT ME! So this part: "and constructing an argument around a very enigmatic overly flexible elusive use of the word dictatorship" is what you did to begin with in terms of Trump being one, with the implication that Obama wasn't one too. My point is that the system is effectively a dictatorship in practice even if it isn't in principle, and practice is the key point here.

As I said before, it's incredibly frustrating to respond to you since you just seem to be determined to fetishistically disavow my points. Even my compulsions to repeat have their limits.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-10 07:22:16

I agree with all of your empirical points, nonetheless view your position as profoundly misguided. Dictatorship is suspension of civil liberties and getting locked up and Newspeak and the cult of personality of The Leader. You are making false equivalencies between systems that we dont like and constructing an argument around a very enigmatic overly flexible elusive use of the word dictatorship.

Posted by MetsFanEurope on 2017-03-10 01:04:15

As slackboy says below, we're already faced with a dictatorial situation when asked to choose between Trump and Clinton (whose repugnant global politics needs no recounting here; it will suffice to say that the difference can be measured in a matter of a few degrees). Just because Clinton, et al. are convincing in their masking of global financial and imperial prerogatives as humanist 'causes' doesn't alter their destructive essence.

On Nader: there's no evidence that Gore's election would have changed anything, historically. Clinton's election would have been an unmitigated disaster for the American working class and for overseas workers- no matter what a liberal Supreme Court might have decided about bathrooms.

As painful as it is in the short term, I think Zizek is correct in suggesting we cast a cold eye on the death of liberal democracy. Immigrants will suffer, workers will suffer, the environment will suffer. But we should not rally around the Democratic party- it not only failed to address these problems structurally, it's always been a causal factor.

We need 'radical projects,' even if it takes a long time, and even if the world suffers in that time.

Posted by StDenis! on 2017-03-09 15:39:25

Part 3 (alt version).

For example, Obama's presidency:

1. Expanded the number of the US's military conflicts from two countries to seven.

2. Installed a right-wing healthcare system instead of a more cost effective single-payer (National Health Service style) system.

3. Gave jobs and huge amounts of money to the people who allegedly caused and benefitted from the 2008 crash instead of bringing them to justice or properly supporting the people who were financially destroyed by it.

[At the time of writing, Part 3 of my posts is awaiting approval and has been for the last couple of hours, so I'm going to take a guess at what I think the problem was and re-post it with edits. As I said above, getting some kind of information about what is or is not acceptable on these comment threads would be useful to avoid mutual inconveniences like this.]

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-09 08:06:05

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Posted by sherry.brown.1991@mail.ru on 2017-03-09 06:21:53

Part 5.

But like I said earlier, I'm pessimistic about getting approval or score voting implemented, because I can't see how to get them past the current system's defenses.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-09 05:28:31

Part 4.

All of the above are right-wing and rich-benefitting policies that were implemented by a party that likes to think of itself as to the left of the centre, so the system is already effectively dictatorial without Trump needing to be president, and it would be almost the same under Clinton or anyone else.

Yes, I know, the Republicans are less liberal about things like laws regarding transexuals and public toilets; I get that they are worse than Democrats to some degree, but apart from things like that they end up implementing most of the same destructive policies as each other, and it's because the current selection system is fundamentally undemocratic in structure.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-09 05:28:20

Part 2.

You end up with only two choices due to the 'lesser of two evils' effect, but then those two choices end up being almost indistinguishable from each other in terms of their policies and actions, so you have something that is as close as possible to a dictatorship but without being able to call it that.

At least with a straight dictatorship you have something that people can see and oppose; with single-choice voting you can't even do that.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-09 05:27:40

Part 1.

I'm finding it very frustrating when reading your replies, because it seems like you're disavowing your understanding of my main points.

The selection system we have in place is dictatorial in terms of the _types_ of people that it puts into power, even though the specific people in power might change from time to time.

Single-choice voting (where you're allowed to say "yes" to only one candidate and then are forced to say "no" to all of the others despite your personal preference not to) is only a hair's breadth away a dictatorship in terms of the way it pressures its voters in particular directions.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-09 05:27:19

I wrote a reply to your post but it appears to have been rejected by the system for reasons that I don't understand. There also doesn't seem to be a way to appeal the rejection process or contact the person who rejected it. I also can't find this website's posting guidelines so I don't know what I might have done wrong.

Maybe it's something to do with post length so I'll try to post it in chunks.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-09 05:26:07

I'm finding it very frustrating when reading your replies, because it seems like you're disavowing your understanding of my main points.

The selection system we have in place is dictatorial in terms of the _types_ of people that it puts into power, even though the specific people in power might change from time to time.

Single-choice voting (where you're allowed to say "yes" to only one candidate and then are forced to say "no" to all of the others despite of your personal preference not to) is only a hair's breadth away a dictatorship in terms of the way it pressures its voters in particular directions.

You end up with only two choices due to the 'lesser of two evils' effect, but then those two choices end up being almost indistinguishable from each other in terms of their policies and actions, so you have something that is as close as possible to a dictatorship but without being able to call it that.

At least with a straight dictatorship you have something that people can see and oppose; with single-choice voting you can't even do that.

For example, Obama's presidency:

1. Expanded the number of the US's military conflicts from two countries to seven.

2. Installed the Republican's (i.e. Romney's) healthcare system instead of the more cost effective single-payer system.

3. Gave jobs and huge amounts of money to the people who caused and benefitted from the 2008 crash instead of putting them in prison or properly supporting the people who were really effected/destroyed by it.

All of the above are right-wing and rich-benefitting policies that were implemented by a party that likes to think of itself as to the left of the centre, so the system is already effectively dictatorial without Trump needing to be president, and it would be almost the same under Clinton or anyone else.

Yes, I know, the Republicans are less liberal about things like transexuals laws around public toilets; I get that they are worse than Democrats to some degree, but apart from things like that they end up implementing most of the same destructive policies as each other, and it's because the current selection system is fundamentally undemocratic in structure.

But like I said earlier, I'm pessimistic about getting approval or score voting implemented, because I can't see how to get them past the current system's defenses.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-09 04:48:04

This may sound funny, considering people say about trump that you take him too literally, but I think you take Zizek too literally. He basically treated the election as a thought experiment from the moment he started talking about it.

I understand what you wrote earlier about Trump being the lesser of the two evils. I think all you have to really say to that is to look at the environmental policy.

I'm pretty sure Zizek advocated for people to vote for Trump specifically because it was not in their best interests. I'm not saying Clinton was in "our" best interests. But go back a few months and look at what was quoted by zizek on breitbart. Look at the things he has said over the past few months.

Now, I don't know what Zizek as a person has to say about this. I've read the parallax view, in defense of lost causes, and the ticklish subject. I am familiar with Lacan, Hegel, and Adorno. And many of the other people he writes about.

Ok, so if we have a trump in office, we're going to react to it. We're going to react in the opposite direction. If you put someone like trump in office, you have more likelihood of creating the new left like zizek is talking about. This is playing the long game. We suffer through four years of garbage, but what we get in the end is a new left.

A problem with this is that there's no guarantee of the new left thing working out. The other problem is that the four years of garbage continue to destroy the earth and there's the possibility that the damage the trump office will do to the environment will be irreparable.

Now, as for what zizek says about trump, i get the feeling he also might be looking for his nazi party (Heideggar) or iran (foucault). Sometimes he suggests things that go in radically different directions from the rest of his thought, and it seems like he does this for the sake of drawing attention to that new thing.

Adorno also wrote that an intellectual shouldn't be held with such strict regard to what is written in their books. To assume these people are infalible is ludicrous. He can be a monster all he wants, but he is not infallible. In zizek's theory, literally not even god is infallible.

Now, as for calling the russia us relation perverse, I think he might be saying that more because he has to call it something other than ok or the news world explodes. There's a bunch of reasons for why the us should make nice with russia, and there's a bunch of reasons why the us should not. I can tell you that the best reasons the US should not make nice with russia are probably human rights issues, but you seem to read enough to know that human rights issues are basically irrelevant to politics.

Now, to again think of the new left and what the new left means. You need broke people to form the new left. The new left is for the broke people. Power is such that you aren't really going to be able to go up in arms as some of the broke people against power and some other broke people. But if you get all the broke people together, you can probably go against power. Like it or not, a huge number of broke people are kind of despicable people but we can worry about all that once those people are going to help you. When you have a little money and basic needs, its kind of easy to hate jews and blacks, but when you vote for an asshole who lives in reality television and he then takes your healthcare and makes it even harder to make your money and meet your basic needs, it starts being a lot harder to hate jews and blacks because you have jack shit and now you're worried about money... And now you're actually worried about the real problem.

The last thing I would say about Zizek advocating trump is that he doesn't live in the US. I mean that does not mean that his input is not valid or that he does not have a point. It means that when you live in a different country and see what is probably the best path, ultimately, to creating stronger left politics in a country in the long run is to elect a reality television star as president, you can do that without having to worry about waking up in the morning with neo-nazis outside your house. I mean, what zizek would probably tell me is that i want a revolution without a revolution, but it doesn't change the fact that i dont want quite as many neo-nazis outside my house.

As for the MetsFanEurope guy, zizek isn't really actually all that opposed to authoritarian government as much as you might think. I mean there's of course counter-intuitive reason for it but i dont feel like giving you a book report since i basically just wrote one.

Let's hope that whether or not I'm right or wrong in my opinions, I did not misrepresent the things by zizek that I have read.

Posted by Blake Roosevelt on 2017-03-09 01:11:04

The left is a myth. Imperialism will always be a corner stone for western superiority , no western left can stand against this horrifying heritage, therefore western left is a myth. Zizek your a dreamer, that's why I like you.

Posted by AL on 2017-03-08 16:40:49

Sure, and those are very crucial radical projects but there are certain moments when one does not act on ones radical ideas one simply acts to forestall a catastrope. I regret having voted for Nader in 2000. And the Marxist Left has throughout its history had a blind spot regarding authoritarianism, instead obsessed with anti-capitalism, so in this case not seeing or caring as I did that Trump wants to be a you-know-what, a word that starts with dict.

Posted by MetsFanEurope on 2017-03-08 14:23:59

Slackboy, you make more sense to me than Mr. Žižek... but then again, I am a Poodle and Poodles just don't understand Slovenians.

Posted by Mugsy DaPoodle on 2017-03-08 14:11:15

Roger, wilco.

Posted by richsmith on 2017-03-08 13:34:55

I'm not Zizek but I'd like to respond to your questions if that's OK.

He's written and spoken a lot about how people who claim to be non-ideological (e.g. centrists, moderates, centre-left, centre-right, etc) are really the most strongly ideological in terms of their behaviours, and so tend to be the ones who end up implementing the most right wing and capitalist friendly policies.

I can't speak to the situation in Argentina, but would guess it is similar to the UK and US, in that there are probably a lot of voters and politicians who think of themselves as neither left nor right wing and so consider themselves to be nicely in the centre of politics.

The problem is they're not in the political centre at all and are really on the right, and so they are steadily pulling our cultures in that direction until we end up in our current mess of a situation where even people like the Clintons can be referred to as "the Left" without a sense of irony.

I get frustrated when Zizek makes this mistake too, even though he knows better. I think we need to start referring to people as belonging to the Left only if they genuinely do. For example by opposing capitalism instead of just trying to moderate it.

Anyone who thinks that capitalism can be tweaked and tempered into something that can help the majority should only be referred to as belonging to the Right, regardless of what party they belong to.

Sorry to ramble on. I've just had a beer.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-08 12:53:51

Always wear sunblock, dude.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-08 12:11:25

You're missing my main point though. A selection system that:

i. Pressures its voters to make an evil choice, and

ii. Marginalises non-evil choices to the point that they represent a wasted vote,

_are evil_, and they have led to the exact problems that have been developed and nutured in our countries over last few centuries.

We need stop doing the easy thing of focusing on personalities like Trump and Clinton and start doing the hard work of focusing on the flawed selection systems that have made them powerful.

Approval voting and score voting could help achieve those aims, but my scepticism lies in my doubts about that same flawed system allowing itself to be changed in such a way.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-08 12:09:16

sorry I dont agree at all, I think Clinton was the lesser of the two evils.

Posted by MetsFanEurope on 2017-03-08 11:28:17

What the hell are these blood sucking jackasses selling. Next image, next image, next image. Let me out of here! What have I gotten myself wrapped up in?

Posted by richsmith on 2017-03-08 09:01:27

The Trump versus Clinton election reminded me of the tagline to the film Alien vs Predator: "Whoever wins... We lose".

The choice was between a perverse liar who would incompetently work against your interests, or a corporate sponsored liar who would very competently work against your interests. Seems like Zizek chose the lesser of two evils in that case.

The real question is though, given how left leaning and entirely reasonable the Green Party's policy proposals were, why didn't Zizek support Jill Stein instead?

If it's because she didn't stand a chance of winning due to the inherently undemocratic nature of the single-choice voting system (and even though her policies correlate almost perfectly with the preferences of the majority of voters), doesn't that undermine Zizek's drive to defend lost causes?

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Posted by lynn.nyura@mail.ru on 2017-03-08 04:30:16

Thank you Zizek, for supporting Trump before the election. (sarcasm) Many leftist intellectuals like you indirectly helped Trump to win.

Posted by MetsFanEurope on 2017-03-08 02:49:45

I don't see the Trump 'detente" with Russia as a new perverted peace, but as a direct pursuit of business interests for him and his associates. It was the same in pre-war Germany: though their politics were ostensibly repugnant, the Nazis and the Americans weren't above pursuing common business interests!

Posted by andre111 on 2017-03-07 11:15:28

Bernie doesn't oppose the empire, so he is no real leftist. That's why so many Americans live in poverty, one of the main reasons, the extreme costs of their empire. For some reason Americans should be allowed to have soldiers all over the world.

Posted by klokker1 on 2017-03-06 17:40:24

Bernie could have beaten Trump. Even Hillary was able to get more votes than Trump. The Democratic Party died Nov. 7.

Posted by Snead Hearn on 2017-03-06 16:24:13

Mr Zizek, do you have any opinion on how, in countries like Argentina, people think pseudo popular parties are "leftish" when they are clearly not? Even the most right wing parties claim that those are the Left, but just to encourage the idea that the left is something corrupted and evil. Aren't this kind of parties serving the purpose of the so called Right? Aren't this parties the same, playing parts of a comedy play just to get their business going? Besides the heavy influence of the media, and the luck of critical thinking of the masses in under develop countries (so as the develop ones I assume), how is possible that people believe this kind of stupidity? As you once said, the left's academics just want a soft capitalism just to ensure their privileged position, if that so, how this could be solve by thinkers, philosophers and linguistics professors? Protests don't even have a point any more (from my point of view). Isn't the social media a great environment to create this 'active'/passive way of protesting? Seems that VR (virtual reality) was already here and nobody notice it. Thoughts ? Thanks

Posted by SR on 2017-03-06 14:02:00

is Obama (or any candidate of the Democrat party) a left winger? don't think so

Posted by SR on 2017-03-06 13:50:33

I'm struggling to see a solution.

A big part of the problem is the single-choice voting system that drives the one-party establishment. It obviously needs to be replaced by an approval (multiple choice) or score (multiple choice with 0 to 10 ranges) voting system, but the incumbents who benefit from the broken system are unlikely to ever change it.

Would people ever be savvy enough to protest and strike for actually democratic voting systems instead of for the regular demands of better pay and conditions? Probably not, even though they have no chance of getting the latter without first getting the former.

Posted by Slackboy2007 on 2017-03-06 08:50:10

Sorry but the New Left died on November 7. The voters, not you, are the ones who get to decide.